Final leg, Tonga to Australia
Tomorrow I haul up the anchor, and set sail for Australia, nonstop from Vava'u, Tonga. The counter on this website indicates that I've been doing this sailing thing for 765 days. That sounds like a lot. In fact, it's so many days, that I'm going nonstop because I'm out of money, out of energy, and it's time to call it a day. I've said from the beginning that I was going to sail from Europe to Australia, and I'm going to fulfill that promise - To myself, and to the thousands of people that have emailed me, left comments, encouraged me, and supported my efforts to keep this dream alive.
I can't tell you the number of times, in the worst moments, where I've just wanted to give up. Where it seemed impossible; where the sacrifices were too great... To do something like this takes a great amount of selfish endeavour and single-mindedness. Relationships are strained, severed, mistreated and broken. Friends come, go, and are lost after years of neglect... Family worries and wonders... Yet the vast expanse of ocean; those moments of the sublime are fought for and held onto by tooth and nail... I cannot explain what this is about, what it means, why it has to be done - It is what it is, and soon it will be complete.
Everything in the last three years has been given up to do this trip, and it's terrifying to think that in 1900nm I will have made good on my promise... So I thought in honour of the "Bigoceans, Tiny Boat" ethos, this final leg will be like all my others others - Long, wet, and full of terrible food. I remember all my long passages well: Three days across the Bay of Biscay on 9 hours of sleep. Ten days of perfect sailing from Lisbon in the middle of winter to the Canary Islands. Thirty days to the Caribbean powered by pasta, twenty eight days to New York City on ramen and rice... Twenty seven days from San Francisco to Hawaii, seventeen days to Palmyra Atoll, and thirteen days to Western Samoa full of canned beef stew.
It simply wouldn't be right to finish this project any other way.
Nick.